Sir John Pringle, 1st Baronet, (born April 10, 1707, Stitchel, Roxburgh, Scot.—died Jan. 18, 1782, London, Eng.) British physician, an early exponent of the importance of ordinary putrefactive processes in the production of disease. His application of this principle to the administration of hospitals and army camps has earned him distinction as a founder of modern military medicine.

Sir John Pringle, detail of an engraving by W.H. Mote after a portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds

The Mansell Collection/Art Resource, New York

A pupil of the Dutch physician Hermann Boerhaave and the German anatomist Bernard Albinus at the University of Leiden (M.D., 1730), Pringle served as professor of moral philosophy at the University of Edinburgh (1734–44). In 1742 he became physician to the Earl of Stair, who was commander of the British army on the European continent, and served as physician general to the British forces in the Low Countries during part of the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–48). In London he became physician to the Duke of Cumberland (1749) and to George III (1774). He was created a baronet in 1766.

Pringle’s chief published work was Observations on the Diseases of the Army (1752). Medical procedures outlined in the book addressed problems of hospital ventilation and camp sanitation by advancing rules for proper drainage, adequate latrines, and the avoidance of marshes. He recognized the various forms of dysentery as one disease, equated hospital and jail fevers (typhus), and coined the term influenza. His suggestion that military hospitals be treated as sanctuaries mutually protected by belligerents eventually led to the establishment of the Red Cross (1864).

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This era was also characterized by efforts to educate people in health matters. In 1852 British physician Sir John Pringle published a book that discussed ventilation in barracks and the provision of latrines. Two years earlier he had written about jail fever (now thought to be typhus), and again he emphasized the same needs as well as personal hygiene. In 1754 James Lind, who had worked as a...